HacKer Chapter 13

Chapter 0013    Digital image recovery

Outside of the Flourishing Electronic repair shop, an ordinary looking middle-aged man was pointing at the A4 paper which was just pasted a moment ago.

Shi Lei put the keyboard and mouse aside, turned around, and walked towards the man.

"Yes, we do provide professional data recovery and image processing!"

In contrast, Sun Feng, who was staring at the middle-aged man, revealed a look of deliberation.

The middle-aged man introduced himself willingly, "My surname is Feng. I need your help to help me in recovering some digital images."

"If you're able to recover them, money is not a problem!"

Shi Lei smiled when he heard that.

Once the door of luck opens up, obstacles wouldn't be able to hinder him!

He had just earned himself one thousand and now, another business opportunity awaited him!

"Nice to meet you, Mr. Feng."

Shi Lei shook hands with the middle-aged man named Feng.

"Mr. Feng, as what we stated before, we provide professional services. Thus, the charges might be a bit high!"

"If it's just a simple data recovery, I advise you to go to fourth floor and find some studios which provide data recovery."

Sun Feng suddenly clapped his hands. Looking at the middle-aged man, his face smiled as he voiced out, "Chief Feng!"

"Nice to meet you!"

The middle-aged man with the surname Feng, calmly looked at Sun Feng, neither revealing a dark expression nor showing a smile.

Sun Feng self-introduced himself, "Feng Zhong, I am Xiao Sun!"

"That day, my father, Sun Chenghai, and I, both partic.i.p.ated at the banquet you held!"

Chief Feng thought for a moment before revealing a slight smile.

"So, it's the son of the Sun family."

Sun Feng patted the shoulder of Shi Lei and introduced him, "s.h.i.tou, this is our well-known entrepreneur in Shuangqing City, the executive of Huanshi Anfang, Mr. Feng Ke."

"Chief Feng, this is my buddy. His name is Shi Lei. You can call him Xiao Shi or even s.h.i.tou is fine."

Feng Ke slightly nodded his head.

"Mr. Shi, it's nice meeting you!"

Sun Feng, who was on the side, opened his mouth, "s.h.i.tou, do you have any confidence? You must help Chief Feng!"

Shi shrugged his shoulder, "I need to look at the situation first!"

"Chief Feng, enter my shop first. Then you can talk about the digital images that you want restored."

Sun Feng attentively welcomed Feng Ke into his stop and he went to tell Xiao Liu to prepare some tea.

Feng Ke took out a pendrive and carefully handled it over to Shi Lei.

"Mr. Shi, I need to recover all the data and images from this pendrive!"

Taking into account the ident.i.ty of Feng Ke, Shi Lei was somehow hesitant in his heart. If there were any pictures related to a crime or a bed scene, then that wouldn't be good!

Feng Ke had become an executive for decades. From Shi Lei's facial expression, he naturally knew what Shi Lei was worrying about.

"Mr. Shi, you don't have to worry. In the pendrive, they isn't anything that people aren't allowed to see."

"They're just pictures of my deceased dad!"

Feng Ke sighed and continued on in a sad tone, "At that time, my dad quickly pa.s.sed away. So, all of his pictures are only in digital form."

"At first, I intended to transfer the photos onto my computer but when I inserted it into my computer, it couldn't be read and came out with this data error."

"Perhaps the pendrive has been infected with some kind of virus or maybe because of other reasons."

"I had gone to several data recovery studios but they were useless in this situation."

"I hope that Mr. Shi can help me recover all of the data in the pendrive!"

Sun Feng, who was beside them, added on, "s.h.i.tou, do your best!"

Shi Lei jokingly made a remark as he held the pendrive, "Feng bro, luckily you still have two barely pa.s.sable computers here!"

After he finished the sentence, Shi Lei went back towards the maintenance desk. Feng Ke stood up and tagged along. His face was showing a tense expression.

Taking Feng Ke's pendrive, it was inserted into the USB port.

"Ding dong ~"

From the speaker, the sound of a USB connection echoed.

Then, a window popped out from the lower right corner.

"Unrecognised device!"

Shi Lei opened the device manager window. Looking for the pendrive option in the device management tab, he selected the action to start the device again.

But even after he did so, the computer still couldn't identify the device.

For such a situation to occur, there were basically two general possibilities.

First, the pendrive had some hardware damage. For example, being exposed to water, causing damage to internal circuits, or other reasons.

However, the probability for hardware failure was very small!

Plus the fact that within the pendrive, there existed someone's photos of their father. People would naturally take great care of it.

As a result, it should be the second reason— virus infection. The infection then made the pendrive unable to be identified and corrupted.

Shi Lei didn't use any anti-virus software which was installed on the computer.

Although in 2006, Rising Antivirus was still the mainstream choice, the capabilities of this software was only ordinary.

Plugging in his own pendrive, Shi Lei directly activated the virus a.n.a.lysis software within his pendrive and began to scan Feng Ke's pendrive.

After a moment, the software that was prepared by Shi Lei, immediately detected a virus.

Through the code a.n.a.lysis, the role of this virus is to simulate a lack of power from the USB. When the feedback was received by the computer host, it then gave the result of the device unable to being recognised by the computer.

Shi Lei manually removed the virus himself. Then he replugged Feng Ke's pendrive back into the USB port.

"Ding dong~"

This time, Feng Ke's pendrive was successfully detected.

However, when Shi Lei opened the files in the pendrive, he suddenly frowned.

In the pendrive's storage, there were a lot of messy files stored inside. Some were system files and some were just meaningless files.

Obviously, the files in the pendrive had been deleted numerous times and rewritten countless times.

Restoring the data, without a doubt, was an extremely difficult task!

Softwares like EasyRecovery and so on, they were simply useless in restoring the files.

It was no wonder that ordinary data recovery studios weren't able to complete the task.

Shi Lei let out a long sigh.

Sure enough, money wasn't that easy to obtain.

"Chief Feng, do you remember how many pictures were in the pendrive, the name of the folder containing the pictures, and general names of each picture?"

Feng Ke pondered for a while, "Mr. Shi, such information is helpful in restoring data?"

"Of course!"

Shi Lei began to explain.

To find the required files from a sea of countless deleted files, if there wasn't a hint at all, it would be very difficult!

After all, he needed to reconfirm before restoring any files. Plus, during the recovery process, it was still possible to accidentally destroy the data of files which hadn't been recovered yet.

"If you know the folder's name and the general naming of the photos, it would be easier detecting the traces of files which we are searching for from the deleted files."

"This way, the workload to recover the data would be much smaller and the success rate would be higher!"

Feng Ke finally managed to recall, "My dad's photos, there are a total of 62. They're stored in a folder named 'Father'."

"As for the general names of the photos, I'm not sure."

"Anyway, there are some random numbers."

Shi Lei then continued to ask, "Chief Feng, what equipment did you use to take these photos?"

Feng Ke frowned as he pondered. Taking out his phone, he began to dial a number.

"h.e.l.lo. Xiao Ceng, that day when you took the photos of my dad, what was the brand and model of the camera that you were using?"

While holding the phone with his left hand, Feng Ke noted down the details with a pen in his right hand.

"Alright, I got it!"

Feng Ke hung up the phone and then handed over the piece of paper containing the information to Shi Lei.

Shi Lei took a glance at it, "This camera's brand, the general naming scheme of the photos are essentially based on DSC prefix plus the specific numbering composition."

"Chief Feng, wait a moment. I will first have a look at the records of the deleted files."

Shi Lei didn't download any data recovery software from Internet. Instead, he opened a programming tool and began to manually write the code.

In his past life, Shi Lei wasn't only formidable in hacking, his graphic processing and data recovery were also on par with his hacking skills.

Shi Lei's finger speed was extremely high. His accuracy in typing was also the same. It could be said that he almost never made any mistakes when pressing the keys.

With the dense continuous ringing of the keyboard, a trace of hope was raised within Feng Ke's heart.

At least Shi Lei wasn't like those ordinary data recovery studios. Just by looking at the pendrive itself, they already demanded a high fee— yet they couldn't even open the pendrive!

After more than half an hour, Shi Lei's head, not even turning, "Boss Feng, get me a bottle of mineral water!"

Sun Feng turned around and said, "Xiao Liu, go buy several bottles of mineral water."

Xiao Liu put down the tool in his hands and immediately ran downstairs.

In the Bainao building, there were no shops selling mineral water. Only outside of the building could mineral water be purchased.

An hour later, Shi Lei was still typing on the keyboard— rapidly and powerfully.

Sun Feng and Feng Ke had already sat down waiting for him. Feeling bored, they filled their time with some small chat.

As for Xiao Liu, who did all the odd jobs, he stood behind Shi Lei and watched him write the code.

Unfortunately, he didn't have any basic knowledge in the programming language. How could he understand what Shi Lei was doing?

Although Shi Lei noticed him and had a slightly good impression towards this studious young man, that didn't mean that Shi Lei would share any knowledge with him.

Under the heavens, there was no such thing as a free lunch!

If you need something, then you have to sacrifice something in return.

The clock needle silently hit 11:30. Sun Feng took a glance at Shi Lei and noticed that he was still concentrating in hitting the keyboard.

Then he looked at Feng Ke, "Chief Feng, why don't we have our meal first?"

Feng Ke slightly raised his voice, "Mr. Shi, I think you better take a break. Let's go out and have our lunch?"

Shi Lei shook his head as a sign of refusal.

"No time!"

"Brother Feng, just get take-out for me!"

"Your treat!"

Shi Lei's head didn't even turn. He was still concentrating in staring at the computer screen.

It was all thanks to his enthusiasm for technology that Shi Lei was now one of the best hackers in the world!

Sun Feng showed an expression of asking for an opinion as he looked at Feng Ke.

Feng Ke nodded his head.

"Xiao Sun, go and order some food delivery. We will eat in the store!"

Sun Feng coughed for a second, "To let Chief Feng have take-out food, how could we do that?"

Feng Ke smiled.

"I'm also an ordinary person. Why can't I have take-out food?"

At 12pm sharp, three delivery girls carrying lunch arrived at the Flourishing Electronic repair shop.

Sun Feng attentively invited Feng Ke to join them for a meal.

Feng Ke, as expected, walked towards Shi Lei and spoke with a soft tone, "Mr. Shi, eat first."

Shi Lei seemed to not hear it. His hands were still endlessly dancing on the keyboards.

Sun Feng didn't feel surprised at this cold reaction from Shi Lei, "Chief Feng, you don't have to bother s.h.i.tou. He probably won't eat until after he finishes his job."

"If you repeatedly call him again, he might even rage!"

Helplessly, Feng Ke could only return towards his table.

"Well, we will wait for him to finish first!"